China

Ok, so sorry this is really late but the internet on the ship has been rediculous. I am currently in a really strange internet cafe in Japan which you will get to hear all about in my Japan posts. Unfortunately, I have no pictures with me so that will have to wait for another time. Also, if you are wondering why there are no contractions in this posting, it is because I cannot find the apostrophe on the Japanese keyboard.

China was amazing! I had a really great time, although I am now official tired of museums, temples, and other various historical sights. As soon as our ship arrived in Hong Kong, we had to leave for the airport which is sad because everyone said they loved Hong Kong. Oh well, I just have to go back some day. The airport was great though, and I have never in my life been more excited for Burger King. We also saw a random vending machine where you could buy reusable shopping bags. Pretty smart idea!

Our first stop in mainland China was Beijing. We had Peking Duck at the restaurant that supposedly invented it. I think that lots of places say that though, so who knows for sure. They sure were into their duck though! Every dish we had contained duck and all of the decorations were ducks. We walked around Tian-an-men (that is how the Chinese spell it) Square both at night and during the day. There were so many people there! The weird thing was how many asian people wanted to take pictures with us, I felt like a celebrity. We also got to see the Forbidden City, which was HUGE and the Summer Palace of some emperor. Of course, the Great Wall was really cool, because I really did not think I would ever be there in my life. I climbed the first part of the area we were at, but it was really steep and so I did not make it all the way to the top of the hill.

The second city we got to in China was Xian, which actually has an apostrophe between the i and the a, but we already addressed that issue. I really enjoyed our time here, especially at the Terra Cotta Warriors Museum. It is the underground clay army of an emperor that was discovered in 1972 by some farmers digging a well. There are over 8000 life sized soldiers standing in battle formation. We also saw another museum that was the tomb of a later emperor who did not have as much money and so it was an army of smaller soldiers. Later in a market we met some Chinese students majoring in English and walked around with them. They were so cute, and so happy to talk with us. I felt bad because they knew so much about American movies and music, but all I could think of that was Chinese was Kung-Fu movies. They were super nice though and Kendall got their e-mails, so I hope we can stay in touch.

On the last day we met the ship in Qingdao and explored the city a little bit. We went to a small place for lunch where we just had to point at things we wanted to eat, and we never really found out what some of them were, but for all four of us to eat and have drinks, it was less than $8. We also found a really cute cafe/bar with a really nice waitress. She told us that we could borrow DVDs for free if we brought them back, but when we told her we were leaving for Japan, she got really sad and told us that she wanted us to come back and visit. She even gave us little pins with the name of the place as gifts. We had a pretty fun time, except for when it came time to get back on the ship. The taxis could not drive into the port area and had to drop us off like a mile away from the ship from where we had to walk through places that would be illeagal to be in without hardhats in the States. Overall though, good times in China!